Marvelous Miniature Furniture
I still love dollhouses.
In the 1600s, middle class women displayed "baby houses" to their guests These weren't small scale houses, but cabinet display cases made up of rooms.built with precise detail and filled with miniature household items. They were worth the price of a full size house, and most usually owned by wealthy women living in Holland, England and Germany.
It was not the small scale house that was preferred, it was the perfect little furniture, the fittings and porcelain that really took the limelight.
None of us can afford these Lilliputian treasures but there's plenty of miniature furniture to be found that would please the earlier owners of baby houses. And you don't need to be fabulously wealthy either!
When I was a little girl I had eight doll houses, all made by my father. He was no carpenter, but he built lovely 1:12 scale miniature homes for me, and every birthday from the age of five I received a new architectural design. At thirteen, however, I had put the doll houses and their tiny contents behind me. How I wish I had them now!
Seventeenth-century Doll House
Costing as much as a real house
Seventeenth-century doll's houses were not childrens' toys. This one certainly wasn't!
It's one of three seventeenth-century doll's houses commissioned by Petronella Oortman, a wealthy lady of Amsterdam.
Petronella ordered miniature porcelain objects from China and commissioned furniture makers and artists to decorate the interior. It was incredibly expensive to create a model house of such magnificence and this one would have cost about thirty thousand guilders. Petronella would have been able to buy a real house along one of the canals for that price.
Standard scales for doll houses and doll furniture
The baby houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the toy dollhouses of the nineteenth and early twentieth century rarely had uniform scales, even for the features or contents of any one individual house. Although a number of manufacturers made lines of miniature toy furniture in the Nineteenth Century, these products were not to a strict scale.There have been several standard scales in dolls houses over the years. Childrens' doll houses during most of the 20th century were two third scale (where 1 foot is represented by 2/3 of an inch), also known as 1:18 (1' equals 18").
Tudor Doll Furniture
Doll Furniture Books
Making Furniture & Dollhouses for American Girl and Other 18-Inch Dolls
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/26/2009) 
The Beaded Dollhouse: Miniature Furniture and Accessories Made with Beads
Amazon Price: $12.21 (as of 12/26/2009)
Dolls' House Furniture: Easy-to-Make Projects in 1/12 Scale
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 12/26/2009)
A suburban doll room
A little window on the past
Somehow I've managed to hang on this little shadow box over the years. I put it together for a small girl who has long since grown up.
- Make a Roombox
- This simple dolls house room box is made from pieces of book board.
- Doll House Rooms
- Get ideas for decorating and furnishing your doll house rooms and take a look at miniatures from the worlds best doll house artisans
Dolls Houses at the Victoria and Albert Museum
American Dollhouse Museum
Unlike the traditional museum of cases with displays, The Great American Dollhouse Museums' village unfurls its neighborhoods, streets, rural lands and forests in a vast, continuous landscape.
Representing an American yesteryear of about 1900, the hundreds of antique and artisan-sculpted, historically-dressed citizens interact with family, friends and business associates as would any townspeople.
From the Shaker Settlement to the formal gardens of the Grand Hotel, The Great American Dollhouse Museum has as wide a range of neighborhoods as America itself.
Every dollhouse is open in back so you can see all the furnishings, people, pets, and decor.
Click this link to visit The Village!
Sara Ploos van Amstel of Amsterdam was one of the wealthy ladies who commissioned these poppenhuizen. This one is dated 1743.
Dollhouse Furniture Links
If you have a liens about Doll Furniture, Antique Toys, Miniatures etc.you're welcome to leave the link here.
Doll Clothes
The hobby of collecting doll clothes includes seek more...0 points
Doll House Furniture Updates
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All comments are appreciated
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- partybuzz partybuzz Dec 17, 2009 @ 8:49 am
- I loved my dollhouse when I was a child, and spent many hours playing with it. Wish I still had it. It's so amazing how anyone can make the small furniture. Love you lens!
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- ftuley ftuley Dec 11, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
- Wow. excellent lens.., thank you for sharing. 5***** and favorited! well done!
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- Ramkitten Ramkitten Sep 23, 2009 @ 2:00 am
- Those dollhouses are beautiful. I remember having a pretty big one when I was a child, and I was much more interested in decorating than I was in the dolls. Hmm, I wonder what ever happened to that. I think I returned from summer camp once and it was gone. :( I think I'll ask my mom about it. Her short-term memory isn't so great anymore, but long-term is still well intact, so I'll be she'll remember that doll house.
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- theshrew theshrew Sep 21, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
- Hey, I've created a blythe groups... for all things blythe-related (especially doll furniture). It would be awesome if you could add your doll furniture squidoo to the group. :-)
http://www.squidoo.com/groups/blythe
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